Liam Neeson

Actor Liam Neeson went to Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to receive an OBE (Order of the British Empire) award from Queen Elizabeth for his stage and film career. Neeson, 50, the Northern Irish-born star of "Schindler's List," "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" and "Darkman," told reporters after the ceremony: "I've not been so nervous since I met Muhammad Ali. I really was weak-kneed."

In preparation for his next role, actor Liam Neeson is researching sex research pioneer Alfred Kinsey. Neeson ("Schindler's List," "Gangs of New York") and members of a film team visited Indiana University's Kinsey Institute this week to view its sex research collections and get acquainted with the Bloomington area, including the Elm Heights house where Kinsey and his family lived. The trip is part of the team's preparations for a film on Kinsey expected to be released next year.

For the first time in its run, the chips look stacked against "The Lego Movie. " Liam Neeson's latest action film, "Non-Stop," surged to the top of the box office on its opening night Friday with $10 million in ticket sales, according to estimates. Just behind with an estimated $9.4 million was "Son of God," the biblical epic culled from the History Channel's hit 10-hour miniseries "The Bible. " With Neeson starring as a federal air marshal in a race against time to save an airliner, "Non-Stop" builds on the success the actor has had with thrillers "Taken" and "Taken 2. " Also starring Julianne Moore and the Oscar-nominated Lupita Nyong'o of "12 Years a Slave," the film was expected to earn $20 million this weekend.

One of the lessons to be gleaned from sequels like "Taken 2" is that bad guys never learn. You'd think, for example, that anyone privy to the bloody rampage carried out by concerned father and ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) to save his daughter from Albanian slavers in the first "Taken" would think twice before messing with the guy. Alas, the villains in "Taken 2," being relatives of the slain thugs from the previous film, are out for revenge, forcing Bryan to engage in another round of family-saving and neck-snapping.

Just when Liam Neeson had emerged (from baddie roles) as a gorgeous leading man type--as Diane Keaton's scene-stealing lover in "The Good Mother"--he returns as a doomed romantic hero who's hideously disfigured. Neeson's set to star in "Darkman," which horrormeister Sam M. Raimi ("Evil Dead I" and "II") will write and direct, with shooting to begin mid-April for Universal.

Move over, Kevin Costner. Hollywood may have a new romantic leading man. Based on the sighs we heard for the male lead at an early screening of Touchstone's "The Good Mother," Liam Neeson could be joining the heartthrob bunch. In fact, admitted a Disney rep, the studio's been getting a lot of calls--mostly from women reporters--about the 6-foot-4, ruggedly handsome, blue-eyed Irishman, who has previously been known for not-so-appealing characters.

Seth MacFarlane's comedic western "A Million Ways to Die in the West" has released a bawdy red-band trailer, and true to its name, it demonstrates plenty of ways to meet an untimely end. They include getting crushed by a huge block of ice, being set aflame by a camera flash, getting shot in a duel, overdosing on a shamanic concoction, being gored by a bull and, somehow, falling victim to a splinter. MacFarlane directed, produced, co-wrote (with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild)